


Xenobiology 101

by Ponchyo



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Genre: Mating Cycles/In Heat, Multi, Xenobiology, a lot is going to happen, mutant headcanons
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-14
Updated: 2014-08-21
Packaged: 2018-02-13 03:16:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2135037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ponchyo/pseuds/Ponchyo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The worst thing about being a mutant, is that there are things about you nobody knows, or even can know. You are an enigma to science. Outside of the fact you could get culled for being candy red, you're starting to get the feeling that maybe that's not the only thing about your body that's not like other trolls. One thing's for sure, these feelings he's making you have aren't helping.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“You are dead wrong about this, so wrong it’s not even possible, so wrong that human god is literally quaking right now in anger at the fallacy of your observation” You huff, and despite making to your friend how clear you are about the matter, you can’t help but feel more unclear than ever. 

Kanaya was just telling you what she thought you and the idiot with shades were up to, or what you intended to get up to.

“I’m sorry Karkat, but you have to admit, it would be easy to misinterpret for anyone given how much time you dedicate to Dave in most conversations. For instance, we were discussing the lovely recent developments in Can Town and you decided to start ranting about him again, completely unprovoked”

“Okay, first off, that wasn’t unprovoked, the douche bucket threw a can at me out of absolutely nowhere today, while I was trying to read, which happened in Can Town, which is completely relevant to the conversation we’re having, case closed” 

She blinks, before giving you a slightly amused look. 

“What!?” You snap 

“Oh nothing” She shakes her head, and once again you marvel at Kanaya’s ability to patronize you so effortlessly. “I have to go find Rose, if you want to discuss this later feel free to find me” She smooths out her skirt as she gets up, and for your part, you just sit back and try to process what the hell just happened. 

But in the end, you decide that your neurotic brain just can’t handle that right now. No, you would rather not think about Dave, ever, in any context, but especially not after being accused of a black crush. As if. Instead, you choose to slink back to your respite block a few beats after Kanaya leaves.

The walk back there should be quick, but you’re distracted, so you take a detour to the nutrition block by mistake. This, really, is for the better, because at this precise moment all you want to do is shove disgusting amounts of food into your pathetic face. Hopefully that can put this horrible incident out of your mind, deep into the vault to never be remembered, because you sure as hell aren’t going to talk with Kanaya about this ever again. 

Willingly at least, she does have a way of getting you to talk about things you’d rather not.

You would never actually tell them, but some of the humans’ food is actually kind of good. Like, really good. For instance, ice cream. God fucking damn do you love ice cream. Ice cream has never left you disappointed, not a once. Not like some other things, namely everything else in your life.

So, in one swift motion you grab an entire tub of it to take back to your respite block. And start eating it before you get back, making a great use of your multitasking skills.  
And, of course, you bump into the hipster asshole in the hallway, since when is your life any less cliché and horrible. 

“Hey, Watch where the fuck you’re going fuckass!” The shout comes naturally, like a knee jerk reaction. Dave raises his arms slightly “Look man, I’m not the one too busy inhaling rocky road to look up for a second here” He’s irritatingly nonchalant. “What’s up with that anyway? Dude, I know you like the stuff but are you seriously going to town on all that?” He tilts his head curiously. The heat rising to your ears is from pure unadulterated rage, not embarrassment. Not even slightly. 

“Okay, first of all” you take a breath to prepare your tirade before he interrupts, like always.

“Oh god, here we go, you know you can be just as bad as the other Vantas sometimes, why don’t we save this sweet little chat for another time, you can go have your Judy Blume moment and cry over not getting invited to prom or troll periods or whatever into a tub of ice cream, I’m going to meet up with Terezi in Can Town”

Once again that night, you’re ditched in the middle of a conversation prematurely, and before you can defend yourself adequately. 

“I am nothing like my assfucking ancestor!” You screech out, to the direction of Dave still walking ahead. You have no idea if he can hear you, but it’s not like he would react regardless. “And what the fuck is a period!” You call out, even louder, though with more genuine curiosity than actual irritation. You already knew what a prom was; Dave explained the concept a while ago. What an utterly pointless rite of passage. It only reminded you just how different humans were from you and your species in general.

He turns around with your question, and looks at you like he just hit some kind of douchebag jackpot. “Oh my god, seriously, don’t trolls have some kind of sex ed?” He put his hand in his hair and let out a hearty laugh. “And don’t y’all have the same junk no matter your sex or gender? You should know this stuff Karkles, a big strong troll might take advantage of your innocence if you aren’t in the loop about your reproductive stuff” He’s still laughing, and it makes his slight twang more pronounced. 

“Male and female trolls have the same reproductive organs, yes, but I still don’t know what the fuck a period is. I’ve been educated about my body bulgesucker, my lusus didn’t leave me that unprepared for the big wide world, so obviously whatever a period is trolls don’t get it” You aren’t as shouty this time, mostly because talks about xenobiology are always awkward, especially with Strider.

He shrugs coughing out the last waves of his giggle fit. “I guess it’s just a mammal thing then. I don’t know much about them or anything beyond the general principle either so yeah” 

He starts walking backwards, “But I really do have to meet up with Rez, so I’ll see you around” He grins at you, and like your other knee jerk reaction, you scowl at him. He only grins wider, before floating away like the lazy piece of work he is, cape floating behind him. Stupid cape.

 

Your ice cream is starting to melt by the time you get into your room and find a movie you want to watch. You curl up on the small loveseat in your respite block while watching a newer rom com that only had been out a couple of year before the start of the game. 

You watch the hero struggle to make what you personally consider a pretty simple decision. He’s balancing out his two flush crushes, one an earnest and full of life midblood with a few quirks, and the other a highblood who’s trying to distance himself from the prejudice others of his caste often have, and the lowblood protagonist is rightly suspicious of him. 

When you first watched this film at the tender age of 5 sweeps (your lusus was not impressed finding your copy of this movie, considering all the gratuitous sex scenes) you believed that the hero would get both of them, having a redrom with the spunky midblood and a kismesis with the liberal highblood. But no, you were so young and naïve then, because of course the protagonist of a rom com has to choose between their two main love interests, and low and behold, the hero gets flush for the highblood and the midblood finds another troll they wax black for, rendering them star crossed.

It crosses your mind to wonder what Dave and Terezi are doing still out in Can Town. You haven’t heard either of them come back yet, you would have heard them pass your respite block. They’re probably still having sloppy makeouts, they are matesprits after all. You try really hard not to be bitter, you really do. 

You want Terezi to be happy, but why did she have to pick that stupid nooklicking piece of work? You get why on a theoretical level, Dave is the only eligible person on the meteor who isn’t, a) her ex-almost whatever, b) one part of a committed xeno-lesbian matespritship with the jury out on black partners, or c) a crazy fucking juggalo clown. You understand completely why it was him. 

But still, why did it have to be Strider?

You wonder why you even care so much. Good riddance, they can do whatever the fuck they want.

You make it to the final scene, the highblood comforting his matesprit in the throes of passion, with an ambiguous bittersweet ending, your tears streaming liberally down your ashen face, before a sudden urge strikes you. Never have you felt such a primal need to do anything. 

Before you even realize what you’re doing you find your bulge in your fist under your baggy cargo pants. It wraps itself around your wrist as you pump, and it takes you only a few before you spill all over, effectively soaking your pants and the couch. 

You sit back, bewildered, confused, and frankly a little bit frightened.

Breathing shallow, you go into auto pilot. This isn’t the first time you’ve made a mess jacking off, so it’s not like you don’t know the tricks to get these kinds of stains out. If anything, your paranoia over the mutated colour of your blood has led you to be even more efficient than most trolls at removing stains of this nature. 

You swallow shallow while you scrub at the cushion, pants folded up carefully on the arm of the love seat, you still naked from the waist down. Your bulge is still unsheathed, and you have no idea why. It always goes back after you, uh, finish. So why, um... isn’t it?

After a half an hour and no change on that front, you’re starting to feel a little bit queasy. Whether it’s from a pending panic attack or actual blood loss you aren’t quite sure. 

After fishing for a different pair of pants, thanking the mother grub that all of your sweaters are baggy, you creep out of your respite block. It’s the middle of the night, so you’re hoping nobody is going to be around to walk in on you shamefully washing genetic material out of your pants. 

Because, as always your life is cliché and horrible, you hear somebody round the corner as you scrub at them in the sink of the nutrition block. You hold your breath and freeze, internally reciting a silent prayer to any celestial being that may or may not exist, to not, please let this not be Dave. 

“Karkat? What are you doing up still?” The voice behind you is one of maternal concern and slight maternal disapproval. Kanaya. Thank Jegus.  
Still, awkward.

“Uh, nothing, just um, doing some cleaning. Spilled some soda on my most comfortable pants, ahahaha I’m such a loser” When in doubt, turn to self-deprecation, that’s a classic Karkat move. Surely she’ll shrug and go back to bed now, dismissing this all as another event in the string of your daily misfortunes and trials. 

She approaches you to question you further. She stares at you for a moment, under the single light above the sink, looks you in the eyes for one minute solid before her eyes widen. She reins in her reaction in a second, to her credit, and smiles, in a way that makes you feel vaguely uncomfortable for some reason. 

“Alright, turn the lights off please when you finish cleaning up” She uses her most comforting voice “Oh, and I take it you’re going to be in your respite block for the next week or so? I’ll bring you anything you need, just contact me on trollian should you need anything” She smiles gently down at you. 

“What? Why?” You stutter. Somehow, some way, Kanaya looks even more sympathetically at you. “Karkat, is this your first cycle?” Your eyes go wide. 


	2. Xenobiology for Dummies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> *plot hangs ominously in the background while two idiots beat around the bush*

This is the last thing you expected to happen to you at this precise moment in your life. 

No, you aren’t that pathetic, you know what a cycle is. You also know that you're the last of your friends to get one. Which, isn’t too surprising, you’re a late bloomer. You stand about as tall as Nepeta did, your face is as smooth as a grubs’ freshly hatched rump and you could easily be mistaken for 6 sweeps old, when you’re coming up on 8.  


That isn’t exactly normal, but you’ve mostly tried to put it out of your mind.

Crabdad did tell you what a cycle was and how it worked, it that distant awkward way a lusus does. 

Your lusus was a damn crustacean; he had no idea about that kind of stuff really when you get down to it. He mostly just told you that you had to stay away from everyone for about a week when you’d start getting them.

He told you that it was much more important for you than other trolls, because your eyes would begin to reflect the color of your mutation. He also told you to never mate in heat because… well, for some reason. You stopped listening to him at that point because, wow, not happening. Crabdad is not talking to me about mating, nope. 

The one thing that ominously hangs over you from that discussion is towards the end of it. He looked at you with a heartbroken face, and apologized. He told you that he wouldn’t be of much help. He told you that he wished he could get you to see a doctor.

That threw you a little, but you mostly thought it was the hypochondriac in him coming out again, and the general fear he had of a doctor finding out your caste and culling you. Leading to a stunning lack of medical care that hasn’t seemed to hinder you thus far for all you know. It’s not like anyone else left alive on this rock has had a good doctor or anything so it’s probably fine?

Damn you hate thinking about your lusus. 

You try messing around on your husktop for a while, and low and behold, you find what you must have really been looking for. A folder full of spades.  
The black stuff is your favorite to get off to, despite how much you love your sweet and sappy red affairs in movies that aren’t porn. But that’s just your personal preference.  
You’re masochistic by nature.

You find the top right file and click it, already on autopilot, because this is pretty much just ritual for you by now. 

When the husktop freezes, and gives you an error message, you lose it. 

Full on lose it. No stopping now, you’re all aboard the nervous breakdown express next stop, Karkat breaks a table. It was a nice table too, it definitely did not deserve this, all it ever did for you was give you a place to lay your head when you were too insomnia ridden to make it back to bed. 

Are you crying?

Yes, yes you are, loudly sobbing into your knees, because at some point you took the fetal position. What the fuck?

You hear a quiet knock at your door, and go still. There is nobody you would actually want to be there right now. Not one person you would ever want to see you in this kind of miserable state. It’s not exactly like you’re protecting some kind of amazing reputation of coolness or anything, but you would like to have some of your precious little dignity left intact.

And of course, speaking of cool… “Hey, Karkles, you okay bro? I heard something break from down the hall and I wanted to make sure it wasn’t you or anything” 

“Unbelievable. Go away Dave, I’m fine.” You make a valiant attempt at deadpan and fall short, because your voice is still all congested and heavy from crying. 

The door opens, and you give a long suffering sigh. It wasn’t like you didn’t expect him to barge in, if anything you were impressed he knocked first. You pick yourself off the floor and try to look as casual as you possibly can. 

“What do you want?” You don’t even have any bite, you just sound tired. Because you are. 

He looks a little bit confused, and after a pause he shrugs. “I dunno man, I haven’t seen you around at all today, I was wondering where you were and if you were okay” You feel a heat rush to your face, ever so slightly. He was actually worrying about you? “I mean, usually I can hear you a mile away, my ears haven’t been blessed with this kind of quiet in ages” 

“I’m okay, just hiding out here for a while. No big deal” You almost sound sheepish. He furrows his brow in thought “Are you sure about that? You’re acting weird. You haven’t even insulted me once in this whole conversation. Are you sick or something?” He jokingly put the back of his hand across your forehead, but he does seem genuinely concerned, in his own awkward way. Are you acting that out of character?

Or the bigger question, does he actually know you well enough to tell?

“Um, kind of. I have a thing that’s probably going to go away in a few days. It’s a troll thing. I’m just not feeling the greatest right now. I was trying to relax, before you so rudely interrupted me assfuck” You shoot a glare at him. Mostly to keep up the façade of normalcy, plus it’s Dave so you can find a reason to be pissed at him anytime without much thought.

He scoffs “Yeah you sure sounded relaxed a few minutes, I could almost hear the sounds of the ocean cascading down the hallway. Your computer desk looks awfully relaxed too” 

He nods his head to your broken furniture.

“I said trying you fuckass” You screech. Dave only laughs at you, “There you are shouty, good to see you” he pushes your shoulder lightly and you glower “Ooooh, bruh I’m so scared right now, I’m terrified of this tiny little chihuahua with no inside voice, I’m quaking in my vans”

You grab him by the front of his god tier shirt.

And shake. 

Shake so profusely. 

You don’t know why you’re shaking like this. You aren’t even staring him down you’re just looking directly into his chest. You want to fight, but you don’t have that in you right now. You want him to fight you back, but why?

Instead, he gently takes your hand of his shirt “I shouldn’t have got you going like that, you’re not looking so great right now” He’s still holding your hand, and he uses it to lead you to the couch. “Hey, how do you turn on a movie with this thing?” He’s messing around with your stuff and you aren’t even going to yell at him for it, that’s a new low. Instead  
you just groan “The bottom left button is play” you gesture vaguely toward the entertainment centre. 

The end of last night’s movie comes on right away and you almost choke. 

For his part, the stoic night just blinks, and looks blankly at the screen from above his shades.

“You don’t have to explain, it’s cool. Where do you keep your actual movies?” Dave goes off to the bookshelf in the corner of your room searching, before actually waiting for your response. “It’s not porn you bulgesucker, just rewind it to the beginning, it’s a good movie” You defend your taste in cinematography purely on principle, because you are a connoisseur of romantic comedy and you damn well know it. “It’s not like we’re wrigglers or anything you can handle a movie with some fucking pg 13” He lifts an eyebrow at you, and you can’t see what his actual expression is behind his shades now that he’s put them back in place, that really frustrates you. 

“Okay, first off I was never a wriggler; I’m not a bug thing. And second, dude, I’m fragile, I’m a gentle little flower, I don’t think I’m really to see the troll birds and bees” He gives a nervous grin that was probably attempting to be more confident.

You clench your jaw. “You happen to be dating a troll you idiot” You stare ahead at the screen pointedly. The thought that he’s still apprehensive about your species while he’s dating Terezi makes you uneasy, and you deal with unease and anxiety in your own way. 

Dave takes an edge as he responds “So? Terezi and I aren’t having sex or anything, not that it’s really any of your business. You don’t jump into the deep end first” You draw your knees to your chest and take on a facial expression some might describe as sulking, though you would beg to disagree. “Whatever, you don’t have to get defensive” Your voice is scratchy and harsher than necessary.

“I’m not being defensive” The knee jerk response of course comes first, but then he turns and glances back at you. “We can watch your movie, it’s fine” The air is thick with tension, so you choose not to say anything, instead quickly getting up to rewind the damn thing. 

He gently pushes you back down “I got this one man, just take it easy. At the risk of sounding like a drama queen, I meant it when I said you're not looking so hot. You're all sweaty and you look like you could puke any second, no offense or anything” He sounds genuine enough, for Dave anyway. but you have a nasty habit of taking well meaning gestures and turning them on their head with your mistrust and general inability to appropriately express your emotions, and this is no different.

“Why should you care? I’ve been a wreck the whole gogdamn time we’ve been on this fucking meteor and you didn’t care before! I’m perfectly fine and I don’t need you patronizing me Strider, so fuck off!” You’re shouting, but isn’t the way you normally shout. You sound particularly pathetic right now. Even by your own standards. Whiny, needy, and just plain sad

Sweet English, you sound almost as pathetic as Eridan.

“You’re really pushing for some kind of backlash aren’t you? You talk a big game but you sound real small right now Vantas. I’m not taking the bait” He stands in front of you, arms crossed. 

Something about the way he looks in that moment twists your stomach up in knots. 

He moves to get the remote, and for a while you watch your movie in silence.

He actually handles the plot maturely, and if you weren't mistaken he seems to have more awareness of troll romance than you gave him credit for to begin with. It's a pity you forgot that your libido is through the roof right now. You didn't find yourself distracted by the movie or any of the of the admittedly gratuitous scenes in it, you became distracted by the way Dave's breath sounded as he laughed, the way his thigh occasionally brushed yours. 

You try your hardest to shake those thoughts away, you know their only being driven by the cycle. You're 99% sure they're only being driven by the cycle.

You don’t know when, but you fall asleep at some point, and when you wake up, you find yourself draped in his cape. It surprises you, but you're not displeased. You wrap yourself in it tighter, breathe deeply, inhaling the scent and the comforting softness of the fabric. Your pusher is beating fast, but you’re too tired to notice. 

You’re less sappy in the morning when you wake up tangled in his stupid cape. That doesn’t stop you from holding on to it. That doesn’t stop you from wearing it all day. 

And it especially doesn’t stop you from hating yourself for the way you’re thinking about Terezi’s matesprit right now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Side note- Try to remember we only have Karkat's perspective here. We have zero concrete knowledge of Dave or Terezi's opinions about stuff*wink wonk*

**Author's Note:**

> This started as a Davekat drabble and evolved from there. I just have an interesting (crack) idea about what Karkat's mutation might entail. Plus, I like watching him suffer.


End file.
